I stared into the dark waters of the pool below me. While I could hear and smell the general signs of life in the rest of the temple, this part still felt quiet and apart. For a moment, I even forgot that I wasn’t alone for how Qasven just silently let me be. Until she finally spoke. "Our oldest magic ... is here. Where generations poured their reserves into the water you see before you. It is how I relearned our forgotten magic."

I shook my head, not quite understanding.

"This water shows time ..." Qasven finally said. "Along with all strings that feed and spill from it. You can watch them, study them. Or ... even pull them."

At this last bit, my body gave out an anxious tremble. Wait ... like some sort of magical time machine? Could I use it ... to change my past? The day I was taken away from my family?

Could I ... go home?

No, even if that were possible, Qasven wouldn't just let me change the history of the world ... would she?

I had to ask, "I could ... change the past?"

Qasven nodded, making no effort to dissuade me from the notion.

I shook my head, distrustfully. “If I did that, my ship could be gone. Tab might ... go back to her island.”

"If you chose to change something," Qasven said with a deep nod.

I heard Tab draw a breath to say something in protest.

However, Qasven shook her head to cut her off. "Captain, you have trusted me with the education of your ship's sorcerer. Please, allow me to do so unimpeded."

Tab grumbled something but did not otherwise reply.

Qasven walked behind me, placing her hands on my shoulders–caressing my skin before beginning to remove my clothes. “There is no telling how the fibers of time will respond to being unraveled. There is no assurance, for you or for the rest of us. But isn't that the nature of existence?”

“You don’t know?” I asked, surprised.

Qasven trailed her hands down my back and over my hips. “Nobody the ancestors deemed worthy to use this pool has ever tugged the strings."

Ah, so that was the rub. Even if I wanted to change something, there was no way that the magic of generations in this water would allow me to do so.

To my surprise, Qasven closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded. "As an apprentice to a circle-dragon, the ancestors permit you to enter." Qasven guided me to step into the dark waters.

Suddenly, all my hair was standing on end.

"I-I shouldn't be permitted." I protested, shaking my head. There was no way that any ancestors should have trusted me with this! The opportunity to escape my fear and pain in a heartbeat? I was the last person who should be in this water!

"To be irritatingly honest," Qasven said calmly. "I don't think that you will use the magic once you have the chance. Perhaps I’m wrong, but there’s ... a pleasant sense of predictability about you. If I’m wrong, of course, then the blame will be entirely with me.”

Again, Tab drew a sharp breath. However, it took her a moment to finally speak. When she did, she only said, “In for a penny ...”

Qasven gently touched my girlstick tenderly with her slightly cool fingers. “Now, you'll need to focus. Letting your mind go places that will leave it vulnerable. This magic is distinct for its attachment to arousal through pain.”

I winced, really not feeling up to being flogged or having nettles stuck up inside me.

As if sensing my thoughts through whatever dumb expression I'd made, Qasven giggled softly. “I mean emotional pain, apprentice. This is the magic of a people whose past disfigured our bodies and our culture ... even to this day. Created with the intention of changing a scarred past.”

And yet ... the people who had formed this magic had never actually used it? Even the ones banished to this swamp? Nobody had ever used this kind of power to even try to fix all this?

Qasven traced my body with her fingers … stopping at every scar. The claw marks beneath my ribs, the old gashes of sharp river stones. Qasven then removed her own clothes, revealing a soft body with slight stretching and sparse scars.

It was difficult not to stare and take her in.

Qasven then knelt over the water and began to trace the same patterns over the surface of the water. “When you have corrected the mistakes of your past and found the present in which you belong, just drop into the water.”

Immediately, I knew the present I wanted ... the one without scars.

As soon as I thought it, the water swirled and swam–producing light of its own. There, I saw someone … familiar. It took me a moment to recognize Hannah. Lying next to ... someone ... the two of them watching television, cuddled up blissfully. With a little white and gray cat resting on their side.

Wait ... was the second figure ... me?

Was this why Kavtagro had left the portal to her, of all people?

In the image, I looked ... different ... almost like she was my sister, rather than us being the same person. No ... she's just ... transitioned earlier in life. No religious brainwashing to overcome. No looming figure who had taught her fear.

No scars.

It looked ... perfect ... except for the people who were missing. Of course they were missing. Without my pain and, thus, my desperation to leave Earth, I never would have done so. I would have never met Daava, Namali, Zolreya, or Aamalyn. The four people who were my heart, my home.

Which meant that this version of my life ... wasn't mine.

That was fine, this attempt had simply been a misfire. I’d started too early and caused a butterfly effect. No problem, I would just fix the real mistake in all this.

I ... just wanted a present in which I had been able to work through the trauma faster—to have healed before the world had scattered us to punish me.

Once again, the water swirled and showed me a new scene. In it, I was at the little boathouse where I stayed with Zolreya a couple nights a week. She wasn’t there, though. There was only a note, gripped tightly in the hands of the alternate version of me, whose eyes were swollen and full of tears.

“No … no … what happened?” I asked, scraping through my brain for any clue of what I had done to drive her away. “This isn't the one I want! Show me a present in which I didn’t do whatever bad thing that led to Zolreya leaving!”

However ... the water did not change. My head began to throb. What was I doing wrong?

Nearly breathless, I asked, “Why isn’t the magic working? I thought I could change anything about my own past.”

“You can, and you did,” Qasven replied patiently. “In that version of the present, you healed from your trauma with supernatural speed. You never did anything wrong. And your soul never called out for the World.”

No ... I had to be phrasing my magical requests wrong, or something! Some sort of monkey's paw shit. If I could only figure out the right words, I could fix it and get everything back to the way it was supposed to be!

But how?

I pressed my hand roughly to my throbbing, bubbling head. “My stupid brain–my stupid, stupid, stupid brain!”

“You think it’s your fault?” I thought I heard Hannah ask. I looked up, confused. Of course, Hannah wasn’t there.

Qasven, shook her head, confused. “You think you are failing to wish correctly? If you’re worried about your phrasing, how about letting me try for you?”

I nodded gratefully, my eyes welling with tears.

Qasven nodded graciously and spoke over the water. “What would have happened if Lilly had tried her very best from the beginning? If she had allowed healing to happen in its own time and on its own terms? If she had put every bit of energy she had into fixing things? In living out her true convictions in every step that led her here?”

I nodded gratefully, the words sounding ... perfect. Exactly what I needed to create the world where I hadn't messed everything up. Already my knees were buckling. I was ready to jump into the world that was as it was supposed to be.

The water shimmered, and I saw one final scene.

It was a dark room with a pool of water. A naked, silver, axolotl-taur woman sat on the edge of the pool, facing a person that looked just like me. I was … looking in on the exact same version of the universe as the one I was already standing in.

No …

Horror overtook me; my head became light. Then my knees gave way beneath me. I collapsed into the water. There was a light splash, followed by the horrific feeling of falling. Then I splashed into the pool a second time. Then I was in the air again.

Terror overtook me.

I was falling in a loop of teleporting to the exact same reality over and over and over!

Finally, a hand caught mine–pulling me out of the terrible falling, splashing, and spinning through space and time. I collapsed into silver arms–gasping for breath. Then I could only hold on as I was carried away from the pool.

“It ... seems I was wrong,” Qasven said between panted breaths. Holding me in a death-grip, as if I my again slip again into the fracture in reality. "About you not using the pool's magic."

I shook my head and whispered, “I ... I didn’t mean to ... I ... couldn't do it right …”

“You did,” Qasven replied, softening her hold on me once we were again on dry ground. There, she held me, gently moving a strand of hair from my face. “Both here, in this pool, and in the past that brought you here."

I shook my head, not even beginning to understand.

Qasven laid me on her lap and began to soothe me, slowly drawing the surge of erratic magic from my body. "The ancestors did no change the pain of their past because that past is what formed them. You too had the opportunity for a life free of pain, but you rejected it. Because it wasn’t your life.”

“But … Zolreya was gone,” I stammered. "I don't know what I did to push her away! Or ... what I would have done ... or ..."

“The present does not bend to the whims of one person,” Qasven replied, pulling my head to her chest. “Apprentice, your greatest flaw, the only one I see, is in imagination. You cannot imagine a version of the story where being here is not a punishment. Nor one where you are not the center of the story.”

I nearly argued.

But Qasven stopped me, resting a hand on my lips. "Your soul called to the world for you. And if those you love did not have their own journeys they needed to take, they would not have gone."

It was then … that everything I’d seen when I’d used my magic to speak to my partners finally made sense. I'd been dismissing their adventures as Kavtagro's lazy parodies of public domain stories. And I'd entirely missed that ... I was in one too. And it wasn't just an adventure. We’d ... all been sent on our own paths.

Daava, Aamalyn, Namali, Zolreya, all of them were out in the world. Also growing. Also trying to get home.

Shame burned in my throat ... but ... not the roar of an inferno. Rather ... like antiseptic heat. Not the need to be incinerated to nothingness. Just the pain of having spent so long trying to be more than just ... me. All this time, I had simply been ... wrong. And, for the first time in the longest, that heat let me feel like I could finally just breathe.

I shook my head, my eyes welling with tears. The real pain of this journey settling like weight over my chest. “It hurts ... being away from them. Not knowing ... what will happen while we don't ... have each other.”

“I know,” Qasven said, stroking my cheek. “But we have to let life happen and meet it on its own terms.”

As terrifying as her words felt, I was forced to accept them as truth. Past the ego that had convinced me I was master of my own fate. As much as it scared me still, all I'd ever been truly in control of … was me.

Qasven nodded. "And for you ... right now ... that means reclaiming what you gave up when you arrived in this world."

I shook my head, not understanding.

"Both, the magics you gave up to put all your focus on your healing magic." Qasven said and tugged at the fake tail I was still wearing. "And your people. Whatever you were before, you are now a Circle-dragon apprentice."